After five weeks of political crisis, the leaders of West Germany's two major parties decided last week to form a grand coalition for the first time in the republic's 17-year history. Into the klieg lights of waiting TV cameras in Bonn's Bundeshaus stepped the Christian Democrats' candidate for Chancellor, silver-haired Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 62. "We had an eight-hour discussion of all essential questions, which led to a convergence of views," said Kiesinger. Beside him, nodding approval and sealing the agreement with a handshake, stood Willy Brandt, 52, West Berlin's mayor and the leader of the Social Democrats. Barring a...
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